Posting this reminder as once again a significant number of coins had built up in the hot wallet and have been transferred to the cold wallet. Please do not use the pool as your bank. The incoming coins to the pool should be almost exactly mirrored with withdrawals, with the exception of small balances unable to meet minimum/auto withdrawal levels. When this doesn't happen, it forces the pool to move coins into cold wallets, and in the event of a sudden spike in withdrawals, can severely delay the availability of funds since they have to be moved back to the hot wallet.

Just posting this again. After seeing Just-Dice's closure recently due to Canadian law changes, I want to know that if something happened in the US which forces BTC Guild to do the same it's not going to result in funds that can't be paid out without starting a massive KYC process before allowing withdrawals. Just-Dice had a few weeks warning. That same luxury may not be available if it happens in the US! The pool's official policy (as stated in the FAQ and 2nd post in this thread) has always been that in the event of a closure there will be a 3 month window where the pool is no longer running but withdrawals are open, but there is also the caveat that this policy may be superseded if it is no longer legal for BTC Guild to operate in the same way.

It makes no sense to allow weeks/months worth of coins to build up on your BTC Guild account. You cannot make specific withdrawals to people to use it as a limited wallet, only full balance or 0.01 intervals, neither of which are useful for conducting Bitcoin transactions (and that's on purpose!).

Posting this reminder as once again a significant number of coins had built up in the hot wallet and have been transferred to the cold wallet. Please do not use the pool as your bank. The incoming coins to the pool should be almost exactly mirrored with withdrawals, with the exception of small balances unable to meet minimum/auto withdrawal levels. When this doesn't happen, it forces the pool to move coins into cold wallets, and in the event of a sudden spike in withdrawals, can severely delay the availability of funds since they have to be moved back to the hot wallet.

Just posting this again. After seeing Just-Dice's closure recently due to Canadian law changes, I want to know that if something happened in the US which forces BTC Guild to do the same it's not going to result in funds that can't be paid out without starting a massive KYC process before allowing withdrawals. Just-Dice had a few weeks warning. That same luxury may not be available if it happens in the US! The pool's official policy (as stated in the FAQ and 2nd post in this thread) has always been that in the event of a closure there will be a 3 month window where the pool is no longer running but withdrawals are open, but there is also the caveat that this policy may be superseded if it is no longer legal for BTC Guild to operate in the same way.

It makes no sense to allow weeks/months worth of coins to build up on your BTC Guild account. You cannot make specific withdrawals to people to use it as a limited wallet, only full balance or 0.01 intervals, neither of which are useful for conducting Bitcoin transactions (and that's on purpose!).

I've always had my stuff set for 0.01

That being said, I've never heard of Just Dice, who are they and what happened ? I assume they're something US based and have some sort of gambling thing running for em given the name Just Dice.

Edit: I see where you said they're canadian now lol

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That being said, I've never heard of Just Dice, who are they and what happened ? I assume they're something US based and have some sort of gambling thing running for em given the name Just Dice.

Edit: I see where you said they're canadian now lol

JustDice was one of the largest bitcoin "dice" gambling sites. It had a provably fair system similar to SatoshiDice, but it didn't rely on all bets being placed on the blockchain, which meant significantly faster playing. It also allowed users to pick their odds (payout scaling obviously). What made it unique was the house edge was only 1%, and users could BE the house by investing in JustDice. It had realtime stats and every time somebody lost a roll, it proportionally split the earnings among investors, and the same if somebody lost. It was run by dooglus, a fairly well respected member of the forums.

Recently some Canadian legislation passed which is very vague. It's clear the intention was targetting exchanges between CAD and BTC, but the wording did not specify that, causing dooglus to proactively shut the site down.

This is one of the ways BTC Guild *could* be forced to shut down as well. Just like dooglus, I would not keep the site running in the face of new legislation that was too vague as to who it is aimed at. The problem with JustDice and mining pools is that there is no reason for a user to comply with any type of KYC rules. There are plenty of other sites they can go to hosted in other countries which wouldn't require it, so the moment a US law comes in that threatens the need for KYC it would immediately kill any US-based pool. There's simply nobody that would volunteer that information when there is absolutely nothing preventing them from moving to ghash.io/slush/bitminter, which are all run by people not in the United States.

A small bug was stopping wallet addresses from being verified as valid, so it was rejecting attempts to change BTC addresses. This has been fixed. The EU stratum server also had a very brief interruption, and should be working in very shortly.

EDIT for clarification: The EU stratum *mining* was not interrupted, only the initial connection server which is used to filter botnet/DDoS traffic before it reaches any mining servers. Most users should not have seen any interruption! It only affected new connections attempting to be established.

yep sun = oracle same, stay away from , or at the very lest don't allow java to run in the browser.

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Interesting. Sorry for offtopic, so what do you suggest to use instead of it? Like if you want to do pingtest or any other numerous tools online (which require Java)? My browser asks me everytime Java needs to run...

Thanks

Well if you're really just wanting a ping you can open a command prompt and type "ping microsoft.com" or any web/ip address and it'll run a ping test, no need for java.

Really? What about packet loss and jitter? How are you going to find that out from the CMD? I guess, you would do the calculations yourself I am to lazy to do that....

O that 1 is easy simply use trace route

ie: tracert www.xxx.com

will give ttl and where congestion was found in a command prompt on windows based pc's

will give ttl and where congestion was found in a command prompt on windows based pc's

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Thanks

Believe me, I know that commands very well. Still it won't give me enough info about my connections quality, to have a proof for complaining to my ISP. I just use speedtest.net and pingtest.net for the later, I need Java. But I guess I will have to find another way to satisfy my needs, without using Java.

This is one of the ways BTC Guild *could* be forced to shut down as well. Just like dooglus, I would not keep the site running in the face of new legislation that was too vague as to who it is aimed at. The problem with JustDice and mining pools is that there is no reason for a user to comply with any type of KYC rules. There are plenty of other sites they can go to hosted in other countries which wouldn't require it, so the moment a US law comes in that threatens the need for KYC it would immediately kill any US-based pool. There's simply nobody that would volunteer that information when there is absolutely nothing preventing them from moving to ghash.io/slush/bitminter, which are all run by people not in the United States.

I feel like most of the US KYC laws are only going to be targeted at BTC/USD conversions and possibly vice versa.

Regardless - it's a fair warning to make even though it seems based on an incredible abundance of caution rather than an indication of a forthcoming policy shift.

This is one of the ways BTC Guild *could* be forced to shut down as well. Just like dooglus, I would not keep the site running in the face of new legislation that was too vague as to who it is aimed at. The problem with JustDice and mining pools is that there is no reason for a user to comply with any type of KYC rules. There are plenty of other sites they can go to hosted in other countries which wouldn't require it, so the moment a US law comes in that threatens the need for KYC it would immediately kill any US-based pool. There's simply nobody that would volunteer that information when there is absolutely nothing preventing them from moving to ghash.io/slush/bitminter, which are all run by people not in the United States.

I feel like most of the US KYC laws are only going to be targeted at BTC/USD conversions and possibly vice versa.

Regardless - it's a fair warning to make even though it seems based on an incredible abundance of caution rather than an indication of a forthcoming policy shift.

Yes, so far the US has been very focused on simply regulating the point where virtual currencies are converted into fiat currency. However, depending on how widely accepted Bitcoin becomes, that may end up being changed.

But still, the warning is mostly just to try to get people to keep their balances lower. It's a big headache/liability to have to constantly play this balancing act between the hot and cold wallet. There shouldn't be single users that have balances in excess of 10-20% of the hot wallet balance.

This is one of the ways BTC Guild *could* be forced to shut down as well. Just like dooglus, I would not keep the site running in the face of new legislation that was too vague as to who it is aimed at. The problem with JustDice and mining pools is that there is no reason for a user to comply with any type of KYC rules. There are plenty of other sites they can go to hosted in other countries which wouldn't require it, so the moment a US law comes in that threatens the need for KYC it would immediately kill any US-based pool. There's simply nobody that would volunteer that information when there is absolutely nothing preventing them from moving to ghash.io/slush/bitminter, which are all run by people not in the United States.

I feel like most of the US KYC laws are only going to be targeted at BTC/USD conversions and possibly vice versa.

Regardless - it's a fair warning to make even though it seems based on an incredible abundance of caution rather than an indication of a forthcoming policy shift.

Yes, so far the US has been very focused on simply regulating the point where virtual currencies are converted into fiat currency. However, depending on how widely accepted Bitcoin becomes, that may end up being changed.

But still, the warning is mostly just to try to get people to keep their balances lower. It's a big headache/liability to have to constantly play this balancing act between the hot and cold wallet. There shouldn't be single users that have balances in excess of 10-20% of the hot wallet balance.

So why not set a forced withdraw if / when a users account balance gets to something like .2 since I assume what your talking about is people saving up with .5 or higher.

Edit: Or just impose higher fees on these people to try and deter them from doing it.

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So why not set a forced withdraw if / when a users account balance gets to something like .2 since I assume what your talking about is people saving up with .5 or higher.

Edit: Or just impose higher fees on these people to try and deter them from doing it.

I don't do forced withdraws because there is always a chance that somebody has a wallet on their account that is no longer valid (lost keys, online wallet, defunct exchange, etc). And if the wallet is locked, there is a chance in the case of old+inactive accounts that the wallet points to something like MtGox or one of the many online wallet scams, meaning sending the payout would just give the coins to a thief.

The post is mostly targeted at users who have balances in excess of 1 BTC. Some even have balances in excess of 100 BTC, which are the ones that really scare me due to the fact that if multiple users like that withdraw at once the hot wallet will be empty and cause withdrawal delays for the entire pool.

If you already receive payouts at least once a week, there is no need to tweak your withdrawal settings, unless 1 week of mining is 25+ BTC, in which case you should probably target daily withdrawals.

So why not set a forced withdraw if / when a users account balance gets to something like .2 since I assume what your talking about is people saving up with .5 or higher.

Edit: Or just impose higher fees on these people to try and deter them from doing it.

I don't do forced withdraws because there is always a chance that somebody has a wallet on their account that is no longer valid (lost keys, online wallet, defunct exchange, etc). And if the wallet is locked, there is a chance in the case of old+inactive accounts that the wallet points to something like MtGox or one of the many online wallet scams, meaning sending the payout would just give the coins to a thief.

Why not make everyone login to their account and confirm their BTC address, and then do forced withdraws once their balance goes over a certain amount?

Accounts that are not confirmed within a reasonable period of time (say 30 days) can be suspended.

So why not set a forced withdraw if / when a users account balance gets to something like .2 since I assume what your talking about is people saving up with .5 or higher.

Edit: Or just impose higher fees on these people to try and deter them from doing it.

I don't do forced withdraws because there is always a chance that somebody has a wallet on their account that is no longer valid (lost keys, online wallet, defunct exchange, etc). And if the wallet is locked, there is a chance in the case of old+inactive accounts that the wallet points to something like MtGox or one of the many online wallet scams, meaning sending the payout would just give the coins to a thief.

Why not make everyone login to their account and confirm their BTC address, and then do forced withdraws once their balance goes over a certain amount?

Accounts that are not confirmed within a reasonable period of time (say 30 days) can be suspended.

Not a bad idea but I say the higher fees for these accounts would be the best deterrent.

Say anything over 1 BTC incurs a 5-10% extra daily "maintenance" fee which is deducted from the accounts balance.

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Why not make everyone login to their account and confirm their BTC address, and then do forced withdraws once their balance goes over a certain amount?

Accounts that are not confirmed within a reasonable period of time (say 30 days) can be suspended.

Not a bad idea but I say the higher fees for these accounts would be the best deterrent.

Say anything over 1 BTC incurs a 5-10% extra daily "maintenance" fee which is deducted from the accounts balance.[/quote]

That is essentially theft in my mind. The same with suspending accounts for inactivity. Every coin earned should be capable of being withdrawn, up until the site is no longer operational. Even then, the stated policy is *at least* a 3 month window for inactive users to come back and get their coins out.

Why not make everyone login to their account and confirm their BTC address, and then do forced withdraws once their balance goes over a certain amount?

Accounts that are not confirmed within a reasonable period of time (say 30 days) can be suspended.

Not a bad idea but I say the higher fees for these accounts would be the best deterrent.

Say anything over 1 BTC incurs a 5-10% extra daily "maintenance" fee which is deducted from the accounts balance.

That is essentially theft in my mind. The same with suspending accounts for inactivity. Every coin earned should be capable of being withdrawn, up until the site is no longer operational. Even then, the stated policy is *at least* a 3 month window for inactive users to come back and get their coins out.

So with all due respect then, just because you "complain" about these users doesn't mean they have to make any changes. They may just figure, well hell, if he's not gonna do anything about it then I'll just keep doing my old tried and true of using the pool as a bank and withdrawing when I feel the need to.

Seriously though, unless you willing to actually do something about this "problem" then you might be lucky if only a third of these people actually give a damn and make a change.

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